Top 10 Punk Albums to Own on Vinyl

You'll find some familiar names on our list of the Top 10 Punk Albums to Own on Vinyl.

The Clash are here. So are Sex Pistols and Ramones. Plus the newer school is represented by Green Day. But you'll also find bands that sold fewer records and didn't get as much attention – like Suicide and Wire – but had just as much impact on the music and generations to come.

The thread here is the artists' trailblazing efforts to distinguish their music from anything that came before it. Even Green Day – the only band to place a record on our list that wasn't released in the '70s – sounded a bit out of step with their alt-rock contemporaries, even as they proudly brandished their influences at every opportunity.

When most of these records came out, rock music was dominated by popular bands like Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin and Queen. Despite rock's bad-boy image, the music had become too safe, too acceptable and too predictable by the last part of the '70s. The earliest punk bands came to shake things up.

And those are the ones you'll find on our below list of the Top 10 Punk Albums to Own on Vinyl, which spans everything from arty punks to synth-loving punks to classic-rock-leaning punks to punks who just wanted to stir shit up. Back when most of these records came out, not too much sounded like them. Decades removed from their debuts, they still sound revolutionary and inspiring.